Citizens Planning and Housing Association

While at Johns Hopkins, Robinson came back to her roots in activism, this time on the local scale. After working in public and occupational health for more than 15 years, she became the Lead Organizer for the Citizens Planning and Housing Association in 1997, a position that she held until July 2003. 

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Taken by the CPHA in the 1940s showing the progression of slum clearance in East Baltimore, with the dome of Johns Hopkins Hospital visible in the background.

The Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA) is a Baltimore organization founded in 1941 and continuing to the present day that provides resources for Baltimore residents resources in how to advocate for their own community's health and needs. 

When founded in 1941, the stated purposes of the CPHA were "to foster good city planning, to promote better land use, to improve housing and living conditions and to correct  urban decay, in the Baltimore metropolitan area, by means of research, education, public discussion, legislaton, law enforcement and other methods." [Constitution of the Citizens' Planning and Housing Administration, 1941]

But over the years, the prioritizes and mission of the CPHA evolved to be more centered on community concerns and on building capacity within communities to organize for their own needs. Topics of particular interest have ranged from urban renewal and demolition safety to education reform, but as these community organizing principles indicate, the CPHA of the early 2000s was heavily focused on supporting each community's development in addressing its own concerns and bringing all community stakeholders together, rather than having core issues and its own agenda. 

Part of the CPHA's commitment to empowering communities to advocate for their own needs included ensuring that those communities had the leadership and organization education they needed. In this letter, Robinson invites members of the National Organizers Alliance to assist with a community organizer training session held by CPHA. This was one of the first community organizer training programs that Robinson participated in, but it quickly became a particular passion for her. As someone who had long been an organizer, Robinson recognized the importance of providing training and support for community organizers, and it became a cornerstone of her activism in Baltimore to provide training for other organizers. 

But community organizers were not the only ones who benefitted from Robinson's organization experience and passion for education. CPHA was dedicated to helping communities build the skills needed for them to address any problems they saw in their own communities, from politics to community safety and education. In this document, Robinson shares some guidelines for parents and community members to be successful in their efforts to make changes in the public schools in their community, based on her own expertise as a community organizer. 

Further Reading: 

Citizens Planning and Housing Association Records (R0032-CPHA)

Betty Garman Robinson Papers (R0167-BGR)

  • Series 6 (General Organizing Materials), Box 6, Folders 15-17 and 27*
  • Series 6 (General Organizing Materials, Box 7, Folder 37*

*Materials available onsite at University of Baltimore Special Collections & Archives

Citizens Planning and Housing Association